October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. The Actual Dance is about many different things. It is about breast cancer. It is also about love. It is also about relationships. It is also about spirituality and what life really is. It is about a lot of things. In October in recognition of Breast Cancer Awareness I will post a daily blog with a reflection about breast cancer. The reflections will stem from something in the play. (All quoted lines are text from the play.)Day 29 The Actual Dance. If you have seen the show or followed these blogs you know now that The Actual Dance is a metaphor for the ritual of being with someone you love at they take their last breath. It is what love really means. In the play I describe the dance floor which is surrounded by a darken ballroom with a “good sized orchestra of 40 or 50 or more musicians … who play whatever song the dancers themselves want to hear and which only the dancers recognize.” In what can only be called an ecstatic moment I believe the dance is witnessed by the spiritual presence of “everyone you have ever met, ever known, ever loved in your life, even generations from before us.” And at the end, I add the idea, “crunched are around the darkened walls of the ballroom are also generations yet to come.” While the play is based on my journey as my wife’s prognosis from stage 3 becomes grimmer, the ritual and the experience I have come to understand applies whenever we are forced to engage the loss of a loved one. Have you had to dance? What was your experience?

Stat of the Day: In a study released in 2014 of cancer patients it was found significant numbers experience clinical mental health issues, such as depression, and the highest percentage was in breast cancer patients – 42%

Task of the Day: Say it out loud. It took me six years to acknowledge my first experience with someone as they took their last breath. Talk about your fear of loss of someone and if you have had an experience say it out loud just once. It makes a difference.

Resource of the Day: People have studied “Death Bed Visitations” which are variations on what I describe as The Actual Dance experience in the show. Check out this article. Or this web site.